Apple wanted to stop people from writing any program that
worked even vaguely like a Macintosh. If such look and
feel lawsuits succeed they could put an end to free
software that could substitute for commercial software.

In the weeks after the suit was filed, Usenet reverberated with
condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters Richard Stallman,
John Gilmore and Paul Rubin decided to take action against
Apple. Apple's reputation as a force for progress came from
having made better computers; but The League for Programming
Freedom believed that Apple wanted to make all non-Apple
computers worse. They therefore campaigned to discourage people
from using Apple products or working for Apple or any other
company threatening similar obstructionist tactics (e.g. Lotus
and Xerox).